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Three poems by Scott Bade

Scott Bade

Scott Bade lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his wife Lori and sons, August and Stuart. In addition to working as a fulltime technical writer, Scott Bade is pursuing a doctoral degree at Western Michigan University. He is a former poetry editor for Third Coast and is currently an editorial assistant at New Issue Press. In 2010, he received a Gwen Frostic Creative Writing scholarship at WMU. His poems have appeared in Fugue, Poetry International, H_NGM_N, Night Train, and others.

Dwindle

But always rocking between chapters, but always his notes on the seed packet.But always stalls at the field breaks—The heavy heart: funny how we drag it through work, sleep marooned in its swales,but when wrestling the children it becomes a fat red balloon.

A sheaf of cold air where the blanket once was. And after the turning away.At some point the building must have commenced its own deconstruction. Enough of thisone shingle at a time business. Small debt owed the carpenter bees.So too, the woodpeckers.

Not the walk for 2.6 miles in cold rain to improve hot chocolate. Not the leaf cups werefull of snow this morning and not he giggled as she fingered the spoonfuls of sugar lefteverywhere. What load do the students see him carrying in the folds under his eyes, in allof the jokes that he tries?

Sweater's slight tear: is it air wanting in, wanting out of weave's hold? Did she hum or cough while floating past in her flared capris? She says she's trying to learn how to again.Weather's rare lies. It's not killing the petunias, not fading the paint.

Complicate your life to such an extent that one word may describe it: crazy, fucked, dreamy, dwindle. In this manner one may undertake large projects from aposition of humility and simplicity. What's exposed when the teeth are removed? Atongue that still bites. Somehow he acquires the rights to whining, then through sheer will

drives the market value to the moon, splits the stock, sells to his brother and just like thatwe're asking him where we left the remote, did you see the yellow envelope from theinsurance company? Not the way her breasts swung forward when she hopped bybut the crutches small, pressured squeals.

Asthma

We're fortifying the child's bronchial tubes so we siton the floor, tangled in plastic tubing and tools, tools,we need pretend pliers and a plastic saw and later we hugpillows, because it feels good, really, and I think of football and I know somehow these moments are truly the 64thson that fancy calibrated engineer's ruler called parenthoodbut I don't know where to begin or why I should need such an elaborate rule. Just this morning we tried symphonythen ate the play, it felt that way, sock in mouth, racing to the sofa and the cynic in me says let the boy lose; let him feel the painas he watches the victor (me) curl under the flag but then the realistsays, sure you can do that but what about this fellow over here,draped in the glory of human accomplishment, this one with armsas big as thighs (infant thighs)? When we stood in linefor ice cream, our discussion turned to neon baths of signs,until the sugar kicked in, and we raced again to a formidableconclusion, something majestic like a gnarly old oak;the native Americans in this area used them as markers,as alters and totems, gods who live among us, barking directionsand demanding attention. And they didn't require muchin the way of donations, just a little reverence here and there,pick up after you're done, pack in / pack out, a little water,some sun, maybe some cicadas to expedite the pruning.

Alas

We painted broad ideas in small dots of pure colorand whammo, there it was, a weekend in the park,some great mud, and oh the joy in messes, germination,these patchwork skies full with nothing but the stiff brushesand coarse adjectives, and I'm sorry, the kid's language explodedagain, this time it's paint, circular trails of more or lessrecognizable shapes, lesson wanting, no needing, no public,because today thoughts are ice cubes clanking a juice cup, and we're taming a bronco or, better, befriending himso that his fierce eye and powerful wave of neck might cutthe mist in the dream I had last night of pursuing a stranger'scouplets, they could have been Yeats', they could have beensong lyrics, but alas they were orbits, circles, arc of the reinsfrom that still bucking beast, and my child that I still hold inside,and the other one that's here, painting outside, together they seeshapes in the mud, then hunger, and they run, even with nothing tohold on to, no rope to remind me the jump-rope of marriageappears to be fraying, no non-use, which is a kind of dying,all of the color sucked back to the core, a locus, and I triedto tell my son: have each shape support the claim of eachbrushstroke, like instead of black she chose rainbow;try to catch my fantasy before she hangs it allon the wall, calls it "Emphasis," then storms offto buy thong underwear; you have to understand,I told him, Seurat wanted to correct impressionism,not doom it to the brooms, and my boy responded: firsthe was a tree in autumn, then he was a deadhead, then twig,then theater and audience in front of the refrigerator,in front of the scattershot letters, all of these magnetsand just one kind of attraction, or maybeit's all of this energy and just one chance to use itwell. Each of us trying to keep up the keeping up, andI remember how Mama coaxed him into the bathtub, askedfor an explanation of string theory, before the water chilled,but wait, that was me she'd lured into the tub and what she'd said was "This thing is scary," as she spider-walked her fingers across her ballooning belly, "Explain to me why we're doing this again," she said over razor and bubbles. Because water always finds its ownlevel, because we regress to the mean, which is what the Cubswere doing at that moment, and I can say that now in our more or less calmed universe of children, 6 years removed from that tub, even if fear hasn't really changed its preference to toy withthe future and its comfortable bath of memory,and even if the other thing I told the boy came from a game ofsorts and it was this: enter as many lighted fields as you possibly can,if only to feel the storied heat of their travels, the bits, the lightthey picked up, how everything was defined in an instant and thenblown away the next. It's such quick aggression, this dancewith light and pigment, I mean, the movement, nothe making, of past from present, and all of this forthrightness.

Window

The old hardware store's front window had western exposure and a viewof the faces of almost everyone passing through the evening lava lightthat poured over the suburb's busy rush to home. It might have beenautumn, and slow as the hour between 5 and 6 was, I didn't imaginethe urgency those passersby felt inside was the same I'd knownfor the past two hours, a pull that originated in a book-ended worldwhose only remuneration seemed to be a proximity to the good looksof youth. I remember my name—stitched red smock, the tape measureand screwdriver I carried in pocket. And I remember the broken window a classmate held in front of her then placed on the counterbetween us. "Fix it," she'd said her father told her after she admittedto playing a part in the breakage. Beneath the ceiling fans, I was miredbehind acne, I was a kid at work discussing window repair options-glass, plexi—with beauty as I understood it. How distant Mr. Izzo's historywas right then, how vague the conjugates of be. I was aware of twoworlds within which I existed then, and both appearedto operate on currency as transparent as tar, as liquid as sand. I asked how could he…why was he…? "I don't know," she repliedwhile daring an edge of a shard with her finger. "Can it be doneby tomorrow?" Of course, of course, and I recall the quietthe transaction wanted to wrap us in. This was not high school.We were elsewhere and we knew it. This was the otherreal world. For a moment within that space, there was awareness,a brief and logical (at least at the time it seemed so) placementof things and us amongst those things: the sashes, the lightningbolt cracks in the pane, crumbling putty, chips of paintand each of us, on either side of the window, our hands holdingthe frame, and we picked the shattered pieces, bare-handed, and placed the jagged shapes in a pile on the counter. And nowthat I've had 25 years to think about it, was it commerce'splaying field that afforded me the confidence (there it is, is that it?), to take that window frame from the counter, set it on the floorand just talk to her about her father? A commercial relationship,a brief congress of past and future, and it was all held ina moment above window putty, above the already ancientoak countertop, above the long wooden floor boards that held within their grooves all matter of each moment,each deal, no matter how much sweeping compound,no matter how many generations of boy swept and spentthe afternoons re-stocking weather—stripping while dreamingthe chasm of a body. I can still feel it, the drafty store's pocketsof heat and chill; they are familiar, locatable, small invisiblevestibules wherein I can glimpse the deep cerulean portholesthat hide near the boxed brooms' heads, where I can watch the day'svoice carry the bleach of sunlight to the construction paper displaysof caulking products, where I have a view on the spectacular and dull, and where the next day seems a moment longas the universe's memory: as I hand the receipt and changeto her, a fingertip touch of her open palm. That long.